The new generation of investor – Simon Pressley

Kevin: Simon Pressley from Propertyology says there are many more Gen Y investors entering the property market but they’re doing it in different ways. Also, when speaking of Millennials, he believes the most successful young investors are more ambitious about financial independence than their parents are and it’s paying off for them. Simon joins us to discuss the impact of Gen Y and Millennial property investors.

Simon, thanks for your time.

Simon: Always a pleasure, Kevin.

Kevin: How are they doing it differently?

Simon: A lot of them are taking the rent-vestor trap.

Kevin: Trap?

Simon: Not a trap at all; opportunity. I just think it’s fantastic that at such a young age, they’re taking their financial future more seriously than perhaps what they’ve been given credit for as a generation. We hear a lot about the Gen Y who are spoiled and they just want it now and they pout their lip when they don’t get it. And while that might be the case for some, it’s certainly unfair to blanket them all like that.

We’ve really enjoyed, as a business, working with lots of Gen Y’s who are, I would say, probably more financially savvy than, in some cases, their parents. They’re more flexible to trying different things and perhaps as they’ve entered the workforce, they’ve reflected back on what mom and dad might have done, the decisions they might have made and where they’ve ended up and gone “Yeah, but you’re not going to be relying on a pension, and we want something better than that. We’re going to need to do things differently to what you did.”

Kevin: Isn’t that incredible? We’ve quite often talked about the lessons you can learn from your parents and listening to the conversations around the table. I notice in the report that you’ve released – which is available as a download, of course, on our site – you say that Millennials are less set in their ways and they’re braver than previous generations, probably because they’ve learned some great lessons from listening and watching their parents.

Simon: Yes, that’s right. Sometimes we’re sat down and spoken to or we read things in a book, and other times, we learn just be observing. Children learn from parents all the time, sometimes just from observing.

The age pension statistic – I know we’ve spoken on that before on this show, Kevin – it’s alarming, and it’s something that as a nation, we’ve never addressed. But we have 3.7 million living Australians today who are aged 65 or more, and according to official federal government statistics, only 18% of those are financially independent.

That’s 45 years in the work force, but of course, we’ve never taught financial literacy, we’ve never encouraged households to invest. And I think a lot of Gen Ys, whilst they haven’t been encouraged either, they’ve had to figure out for themselves that we have to do something different to what mom and dad and their grandparents did.

Kevin: There’s probably another influence too, and that is technology. I do believe that this generation coming through is the one that’s going to benefit from the most information. We’ve never had this much information as what’s available on the Internet – shows like ours and sites like yours that provide great schooling for young people about how to get into property, Simon.

Simon: I agree, and I think this is what has contributed significantly to the Gen Y really opening up their mind to alternative ways.

And they live differently to what their parents did. Airfares were very expensive for their parents, but they’re much more affordable now, so they want to travel more. They’re prepared to be more mobile for employment. While some might want to always live in their hometown, others are prepared to, for example, go to London and live and work for five years and then come home whilst they’re doing that.

We’ve helped lots of expats invest. They earn their money abroad and they invest here, or they might live in an expensive city – Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, somewhere like that – want to get in the market but aren’t ready in their life to really anchor themselves to the family home. They still want to have choice and be flexible but recognize the importance of getting in the property market.

They might rent a really nice apartment that they probably couldn’t afford to buy, so they’re really happy from a lifestyle point of view, but their savings, they’re saying “Why do I need to buy a property in the city that I live in?” They have more a mindset of, say, a share investor, saying, “Australia is a big country. There are massive opportunities out here. Where is the best place to get my money working hard?” And that’s probably going to be somewhere other than the family home.

Kevin: It’s that rent-vesting attitude. The other thing too, my memory of growing up was that you had to have a house and your house was your security. You didn’t really think past investing; it was just a matter of securing that house. But that’s all changed, where kids nowadays, because of things like rent-vesting, don’t look at it as a home to live in; they look at it as a property to invest in. There’s a totally different mindset, Simon.

Simon: It’s a completely different mindset. We see that in the style of dwellings, as well. Apartments were very rare in this country 20 or 30 years ago. The typical family home was a quarter-acre block with a Victa lawnmower and a Hills Hoist clothesline, but a lot of the Gen Y, even if they could afford that, are going “I don’t want to be mowing lawns on the weekend and maintaining the garden. I want to be closer to town. It’s too expensive to buy a house close to town.” It’s just a completely different mindset.

Kevin: Just inside the transcript on this interview, we have a download link for you to get a little bit more information, or you can just simply go to Propertyology.com.au, and you can reach them through our website, RealEstateTalk.com.au, as well.

Always good talking to you, Simon Pressley. You always make so much sense. Keep those reports coming, mate. They’re fascinating reading. I love them. Thank you.

Simon: Thank you, Kevin. Have a great day.

The life of a schedule – Brad Beer

Kevin: I’d like to answer a question of the show now that came in from Ivan Lim. Thank you for your question, Ivan. We’re directing this one as you requested to Brad Beer at BMT Tax Depreciation.

Firstly, hi, Brad. How are you? Brad’s on the line. G’day, mate.

Brad: I’m great, Kevin. How are you today?

Kevin: Good, mate. Here I am talking about you and not talking to you. My apologies.

Brad: That’s fine.

Kevin: I’ve sent the question from Ivan through. Let’s quickly read it. “Hi, Brad. Prior to using BMT, I’ve used other quantity surveyors.” Unforgivable Ivan, I will say. “They’ve produced depreciation reports that report up to ten years. BMT’s report lists depreciation for 20 years.

“My question is what do I do with my old reports, which are coming up to the ten-year mark, when I know there are is still depreciation left to claim, mainly on the capital works, Division 43? Do I get another depreciation schedule? This is without any substantial renovation to the property.”

Over to you, Brad.

Brad: Thanks, Kevin and Ivan. The answer is no, you don’t need to go and get another depreciation schedule. I see you’ve done no substantial renovation to the property. That Division 43 number capital works that you’re talking about there is actually the same number and continues for the full 40-year life of that building. So, if it was new when you bought it, that same number continues.

With the plant and equipment for everything that is left, it’s actually quite easy. Your accountant will be able to calculate what the next year’s numbers are. It’s a very simple science and the quantity surveyor should be able to help you, or the accountant will do it, or I’m happy to give you the way to do it in more detail if you like.

We do project the detailed list for the 20 years, and that’s because most of the plant and equipment has gone by then, but we do actually provide the numbers for the full 40 years of ownership on a different page in your report that you have from us. So, you should never have to revisit and get those numbers back in a different way.

If you do any major work to it or even if you do do work to it these days, I’m a believer in the option of the live depreciation schedule where if you do change something, you should be able to update that.

We’ve built a portal that means that your BMT one, should you change something, you can easily online update them, and as an existing client, you’ll have access to that and we’ll be able to put your schedules in there.

Kevin: The information about that live site, is that on your website?

Brad: It is. It’s called My BMT. If you’re an existing client, we can easily give you access, and you can also share the reports with your accountant, as well. He can get access to those as they get updated.

Kevin: Dumb question, but let me ask it. I am the dumb person in the room. He mentions someone else producing the depreciation reports for 10 years and BMT’s are 20 years. Is that the norm?

Brad: Ours are 20 years in detail, but they’re actually projected for the 40 years. It’s actually just on a different page of the report. When we first started, we actually did do them for 10 years back many years ago, but we updated the people when they came to us in year 11 and gave them the rest of the numbers because by then, we were well and truly doing them for the full 40 years.

Kevin: It’s certainly a great tool to be able to do it live and update your records online. They pretty much live live there, Brad.

Brad: They live in an environment where as you change things, you can update them, and really your accountant is not searching around for invoices at the end of the year. I’ve updated it, we’ve taken the old things out, the new things go in, and your accountant can see those numbers as you change things through the life of the property.

Kevin: Excellent stuff. Brad Beer, of course, a regular guest on your show and a sponsor too, BMT Tax Depreciation. You can use the button on any one of the pages at Real Estate Talk to contact the guys at BMT Tax Depreciation.

And Ivan, thank you so much for your question as well.

Brad, thanks for your time.

Brad: Thanks Kevin. Great to be here.

Where to look and what to believe – Enzo Raimondo

Kevin: There’s no doubt the Internet has made it easier for buyers of property – or has it? Is there too much information and therefore, the risk of paralysis by over-analysis? Where do you start, and what are the best tools to use? How do you read all of the information that’s available?

Well, View: you’ve heard us talk about View. That’s a website that’s been designed to be the property insight site. Enzo Raimondo is the driving force behind the site. He joins me now.

Enzo, thanks for your time.

Enzo: Good day, Kevin. How are you?

Kevin: Fantastic, mate, thank you. I’m really enjoying working with you and working with the site as well. Enzo, just a question for you. How do we make our way through this mass of information that’s available and growing all of the time, I have to say?

Enzo: The Internet has made it so easy to find information, but sometimes, like all information, you have to sift through it to find out what is valuable and what isn’t. We decided at View.com.au that with my experience of having worked in the real estate industry in REIs in Melbourne and South Australia and also at the national level, that one of the things that consumers used to complain quite a lot about in every state is they didn’t necessarily trust the information they were being given and they found it very difficult to wade their way through numerous websites.

So, what we decided to do at View was provide a database of every address in Australia so that anyone wanting to know about a particular property, wherever they are in Australia, they can come to View.com.au and have a look at the property, its attributes, how many times it sold, what it sold for, the neighborhood, the demographics, and even construct their own desktop valuation of the property.

We think it’s great for homeowners who just want to know what their property is worth today, whether they’re thinking of selling, whether they’re thinking of buying, whether they’re thinking of investing. We want to make sure that we bridge the information asymmetry gap that currently exists between people who aren’t active in the market regularly compared to those who are working in the market every day, like estate agents and others.

Kevin: What advice do you have for people or someone starting out their house hunting journey, Enzo?

Enzo: The advice is very simple and it’s been consistent: do your research first. Find out what property prices are doing in an area that you’re looking to buy into or invest into. Look at the amenities, look at the price growth over the last five to ten years.

Are you buying it as an investment to make money? Are you buying it for a lifestyle? Sometimes you have to forgo capital growth for lifestyle and vice versa, so make a decision based on what you want from the property and visit View because we’ll give you as much information as we can about every property.

Kevin: You mentioned earlier about desktop valuations. Do they really work? How accurate are they really, Enzo? What influences them?

Enzo: Desktop valuation use a whole range of data sets and very comprehensive algorithms. Now, the banks use them, obviously, before they approve a loan. They’re a starting point or price guide for what a property may be worth. At the end of the day, the market will determine what a property is worth, but an automated valuation model or a desktop valuation model is a starting point and will give you a fairly close indication of what the property may be worth.

Some properties, if they’re unique and there are not many around that you can compare with, obviously, the algorithm is going to find it a bit more difficult to give an accurate valuation, but generally for your typical median-priced home in any capital city in Australia, it’s very, very close to what the property is worth.

Kevin: The other thing I’ve noticed and I’ll quickly mention this about View is there is a lot of great information on the site. It tells you about the makeup of the house. Sometimes improvements happen in a house and View might not know about it necessarily, which is going to impact the valuation, so it’s always good to cross-check that. And that could be an explanation as to maybe why the valuations are not quite what you thought, Enzo.

Enzo: We’ve even tackled that, because you can actually change the attributes. The algorithm works on the number of attributes. It works on the location, it works on the attributes of the property, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, car spaces, land size, sold properties in the area, and the median price. But as you said, it won’t know if you’ve added a bathroom or a bedroom or another kitchen or whatever you want to do.

So, we’ve given the public the ability to go in and change the attributes and pick their own comparables. The algorithm will serve up three of what it believes to be the closest comparables based on the attributes it knows, but if you change those attributes, you’ll be able to change the comparables, and it will change the price as you scroll through those comparables.

It’s a really easy way to get an indication of what adding a bathroom or another bedroom might do to your place, or if you’ve actually done that, to work out what the current value of your property is.

Kevin: Well, there you go. That’s a great tool for you to start with and get a good handle of what the market is doing: View.com.au.

Enzo, thanks so much for your time and your support too. I look forward to working with you. Thanks, Enzo.

Kevin: Good to be talking again. Sarah, we decided we’d get together and talk about education, what you can learn from having a mentor, and both of us are so impressed with what Helen Collier-Kogtevs has done from Real Wealth Australia. We decided we’d get together and invite Helen to join us, which she is about to do right now.

Helen, how are you?

Helen: I’m doing well, Kevin. Hi, Sarah. Great to be back, guys

Kevin: Nice to have you with us, Helen. Now, a lot of this is going to be without notice, so we’ll just fire into it, but as I said at the outset, I’m so impressed with what you’ve done. You’ve dedicated most of your life to educating people about property.

What can we actually learn from a mentor, Helen?

Helen: A property mentor – any mentor really, Kevin – should be someone who takes you from where you are today to where you want to be. As a general rule, I like to work with mentors who I resonate with, who have achieved what it is what I want to do achieve. That’s a key factor here.

If I want to buy a hundred properties, I would look for a mentor who has that kind of wealth because they’re the ones who have really have to go the experience, the know-how, the knowledge, they’ve made the mistakes, they’ve gone through the process, and you can really leverage their knowledge and experience.

Kevin: How do you know, though, Helen, that the person you’re choosing isn’t just selling themselves, because at the end of the day, they’re all sales people and they do that very well?

Helen: Absolutely they do, yes. And how you actually identify the right person is really by asking a lot of questions. You have to do your own research. If I’m looking for a mentor, I’ll Google them, I’ll ask for some references. I want to see who has some runs on the board. I want them to prove them it to me. I’m quite a facts-and-figures type of girl, so I want to see some facts, some data, some actual case studies.

Sarah: That’s really interesting, Helen, because we were chatting before and you were talking about the fact that you personally have lots of mentors yourself. You’re someone who is dedicated yourself to educating others but you also still tune in to the experts above you to keep on the right track.

What are some of the areas you get your own personal mentoring in?

Helen: I guess back in the early days when I started the journey with property investing, I was looking for property mentors, and I found some great people who really allowed me to go from having a whole lot of credit card debt and I had a car loan and I was renting, all of that. I was able to turn my life around and retire at 37. I credit my mentors at that stage for that result.

I have learned lots and I’ve continued the property investing journey, however, when I decided “You know what? I can retire now,” I’m not one to play tennis all day and I’m not one to watch TV. It’s like “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?”

That’s a key question you need to ask yourself because when you retire… I’m 37. It’s not like I was 107. I had the rest of my life ahead of me. What did I want to do? What was I passionate about? That’s where teaching others what I got from my mentors and my own experience added into that.

The lifestyle that I gained, I wanted to share that with others, so that’s where it all came from. However, I had no idea how to run a business. When I decided “That’s it,” I quit the corporate job. I was home and it was like “Okay, I want to teach people how to invest in property and build property portfolios.” I had no idea how to find clients. I had no idea about marketing. I didn’t know a great deal about running a business, so I went looking for business mentors.

I’ve had that mindset of looking for mentors all the way through. In fact, as we were just talking a little bit earlier, I have an eight-year-old now, a gorgeous little girl who is the light of my life. When she was born, I don’t know about other women, but I was a bit freaked out by it. I went from being this corporate woman, to retiring, to having a great lifestyle, to all of a sudden, being at the beck and call of this tiny little human being.

Sure, I knew how to change nappies and do all of that, but I want to be the best version of myself. I want to be the best mother, the best mentor. I want to be able to expand myself so that I have a full life – so much so that I even had a mentor with parenting, how to be empathetic, how to understand children and their feelings, and how to grow them up where they are well-balanced people.

I don’t just look at business and property as mentoring. Even if want to learn to sew quilts, I would look for a person who really knows how to do great quilts, who has maybe won awards with their quilting, whether it be local shows or whatever. I have friend like that, so I know who to go to if I wanted to learn how to quilt.

That’s what I do, that’s how I go about looking for the right mentor, regardless of what area of my life I’m looking in.

Sarah: It’s kind of that you’ve had that experience of seeing exactly what mentoring can do for you in your own life, so you’re able to that or inform your style as a mentor.

Helen: Exactly right, Sarah.

Sarah: Awesome.

Kevin: Picking up on a point you made earlier, Helen, and that is that you didn’t know what you didn’t know. I guess that’s the thing about learning, isn’t it? We just don’t know. Especially if you’re going to go into something like investing in property, it looks so easy until you start to do it and then you find how many mistakes you can make.

I wonder if you’d just help me, though, Helen, because there is a popular misconception about being able to afford to invest in property. Can anyone do it?

Helen: Yes, they can, Kevin. Absolutely they can. They have to want to do it. If people are going to go about their normal day spending all their money and not really taking care of their pennies, then no, but for those who are willing to make some changes, save, pay their bills, not overspend, even with all the APRA changes and ASIC changes and bank changes, all that is going on right now, I have quite a number of case studies here that I can talk about now, of clients who have been able to purchase property even with all of the changes going on. Just last week alone, we had three clients go and purchase property and sign contracts.

It can be done; you just got to be willing to do it, obviously, learn the process so that you don’t make mistakes, and then having a mentor to guide and navigate you is what accelerates that.

I have one client, Bruce, he’s Asian, and he came to me one time and he said, “Helen, I want to buy a property, however, my friends all keep telling me I should buy blue chip properties.” You’ve probably heard that yourselves.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Helen: Blue chip, 2 km to 10 km from the city, or maybe 2 km to 20 km if you’re in Sydney.

He said, “That’s what I’m going to buy.” He had $50,000 as a deposit, on a single income. So, he’s single, $80,000 a year, and he wanted to buy blue chip property. I said, “Okay, Bruce, what’s your strategy?”

When I talk about strategy, there are 13 key ingredients to formulating a strategy. It’s not “Oh, do I buy capital growth? Or do I buy cash flow? Do I buy blue chip? Do I buy a development? Do I buy and renovate?” It’s not that; it’s deeper than that.

It’s about your financial situation, and identify where you’re at in life, what are your goals? What’s your budget? What’s your lifestyle? What’s your financial position? How does the bank view you? How do you want to structure your assets? Do you want to buy in trust? Is it superannuation? What is it you want to achieve?

When you lay that all out on the table, it’s actually quite in depth, so it takes a little while to sort through that to formulate a strategy. But with Bruce, he said, “No.” Blue chip capital cities is all he wanted to do because that’s what everybody told him.

When we did for strategy with him, he actually realized that had he bought a blue-chip property, the banks would have lent him the money, of course, no problem. He would have bought one, but only one.

Because he did that strategy and actually went through the process, Bruce, even as a single guy on $80,000… And half way through all of this mind you, he was made redundant, he moved states and got a new job, and in the new job, he now earns $95,000. He’s now up to purchasing his fifth property. That’s like today, now. It’s not back in 2015 or 2012; it’s right now.

That’s just a perfect example of when you’re driven and when you want to do this… He made changes. He was the type of guy, single, going out every weekend, spending all of his money. He turned that all around. Yes, he still enjoyed his lifestyle, he still went out with his friends. He didn’t stay home watching TV all weekend. He enjoyed himself, but he was smarter with his money.

Now, he’s up to his fifth property, and I’m so proud of Bruce because he had to go against not only what his circle of friends and family were telling him but this belief that he had that blue chip was the only way to go.

Kevin: In the full version of that interview, you can hear on the Your Investment Property magazine channel and also on the RET channel, that chat with Helen Collier-Kogtevs, more fantastic examples in there.

But more especially, I want to tell you about the offer that she makes, which is a free download where she’s written a paper on how to find a mentor and the benefits from having a mentor. This is a great read. It’s yours absolutely free. Just go and find the podcast on the website. Use the link. We’ll also be letting you know if you’re a subscriber about it in a special broadcast. Watch out for that, and make sure you pick up that special report from Helen Collier-Kogtevs at Real Wealth Australia.

Thanks Helen. Thanks Sarah. Talk Soon.

Sarah: Thanks Kevin.

Helen: Thank you.

4 step process to success – Phillipe Brach

Kevin: I introduced a topic a couple of weeks ago on the show with our guest who is my next guest, Philippe Brach from Multifocus Properties & Finance and also the author of the great book Property Wealth in Any Market. We talked about that rule of 72.

Hi, Philippe. How are you?

Philippe: I’m good, Kevin. Thank you.

Kevin: I love that rule, teaching kids about compounding. So, go back and have a listen to that. We broadcast that a couple of weeks ago. Just go up into the search panel at Real Estate Talk, put in Philippe’s name, and all of his interviews will come up.

Philippe, I want to talk to you about the bones of your book. It’s all about the process of property investing success, and you give us a four-step process. I know we can’t cover it in a matter of minutes, but can you just give us a bit of an overview, please?

Philippe: Certainly. The four steps are fairly logical. In fact, the first step is more a phase, if you want. When people are going on the property investment journey, there are a certain number of things you do in a certain order.

The very first thing you need to do is go into what we call the planning phase, which is the very first phase, which is where an investor or a would-be investor actually educates themselves to understand how it works.

Education in terms of understanding the numbers is paramount because, to me, investing in property is not really about property; it’s about making money and creating for wealth. For that, you need to understand how the numbers work. It’s a numbers game.

The planning phase is really the crucial one because it will dictate how you’re going to invest, how far, how fast, etc., and also help you set up your targets.

The second phase is what we call the accumulation phase. Once you understand how property works and you’re comfortable with the numbers and you’re ready, you have your deposit, you have your borrowing capacity sorted out, then you go into the accumulation phase where you actually execute the plan and the strategy, which is if your target is five or six properties, to start accumulating them.

The speed at which you accumulate them will be sorted out in the planning stage, and so you start buying and accumulating these properties. Every time you buy one, you look at where you’re going to get the deposit from – is it equity from the previous property, or is it savings, etc. – and you build up your portfolio.

Then you go into the third phase, once you’ve achieved your goal, and that is the best phase of all. It’s called the transition phase, and it’s where you do absolutely nothing. You just stop buying, and you let capital growth do its magic and actually build up wealth for you.

During that phase, if you can, some investors start paying down their debt because they’ve repaid their home loans so they have no more non-tax deductible debt, so they start repaying their investment then.

And then when you get to phase four, which is the drawdown phase, it’s when you finally decide to retire and you need to start looking at the income stream for you once you’ve retired.

The drawdown phase can be in three parts. The first part is if you’ve paid down your loans enough to create positive cash flow that is sufficient for your needs, then that’s it; you just continue doing that. You might want, from time to time, to sell one property because until you sell a property, you can’t cash in the equity you’ve built up in there. As you grow older, you sell one property from time to time and use the cash to do whatever you want.

The other option you can have is to sell the whole portfolio. So, go to the other extreme: sell the whole portfolio and put it in the bank. If you have a portfolio with about $2 million worth of equity, sell the whole lot, pay the tax man something, probably $500,000, and then put the rest in the bank, earn interest and just live off that.

Then the most probable way of drawing down your wealth is by doing a combination, a hybrid between the two methods I’ve just highlighted, and that is to sell some of your properties to pay the debt off on some of the others until such time as you create enough income stream for you to live on, and then also that will still leave part of your portfolio exposed to capital growth.

Then the same thing: as you grow older, if you’re left with three or four properties, at some point you decide to sell one because then you can cash something in and go on a massive cruise around the world or help your kids get into property.

Kevin: That last phase you talked about there, it would seem to me to be very appealing to be able to sell down some of it to reduce that debt but hold to some of those properties to enjoy that capital growth. Not that you’d want to gear against it, but it’s compounding the whole time, Philippe.

Philippe: It certainly is, and that’s the secret of it, the compounding. If you start early enough and you build a substantial portfolio, then it’s so much better and you have so many opportunities to do what you want. Having a bit of money is actually giving you choices, and it’s great to be in that position.

Kevin: It makes a lot of sense, and there’s a lot more information about that four-step process inside Philippe’s book, Property Wealth in Any Market. That’s quite freely available at most book shops.

Actually, I saw a post that you put up recently when you said it’s nice to be in good company. I think your book was right beside one by Richard Branson.

Philippe: Yes, that’s correct. It was a bit of a fluke because, obviously, my name starts with B-R-A and Branson’s as well, so when people put it in alphabetical order on the shelf, invariably, I’m next to him and always get that joke saying “Who is this guy next to Philippe?”